


Our Story

by CatsDog



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dalish, Dorian - Freeform, Elf, Elves, F/M, History, Love, Romance, Skyhold, archive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 12:36:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3327263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatsDog/pseuds/CatsDog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elanna Lavellan is a peculiar contradiction as the heathen born Herald of Andraste. As the story of her and the Inquisition continue to unfold she comes to realize that the story of her own people is a simple catastrophe away from being snuffed out like a candle, driving her to search for something, anything written about her people in Skyhold's archives. Solas/Lavellan</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Story

It seemed a strange thing to Elanna Lavellan how great a distance she felt from the religion of humanity, even in spite of her position. The Inquisition was a human made entity, reflecting the growing needs of humans as they addressed human crises of faith. Somewhere in all of that the First to Clan Lavellan’s Keeper had been swept on the tide of piety and deposited onto a jagged throne. Ten thousand soldiers, entrenched in the valley below Skyhold, assembled as volunteers of the faithful, kissing Andraste’s hands on her idols and thanking the Maker for sending her. An Elf. A Dalish.

The severity of it all was not lost on her, but it was too great a weight, too defining a moment in an epoch to think too greatly on. It was much like the sun, forever burning in its radiance and ushering in the day, but that did not mean that she could bear to stare at it for long. Therefore, so long as she was enclosed in the walls of Skyhold, surrounded by those she had come to depend on as her inner circle, she could remain flighty and ignore the implications of her exalted position.

The holy nature of the Inquisition could not be ignored during the end of the week, when the faithful would gather in Skyhold’s chantry and hear the Mothers sermonize. They would sing songs together or sit in hushed silence in a display that intrigued Elanna nearly as much as it made her uncomfortable. She knew as a matter of course that chantries served a communal function in the small towns and villages, but it was different here. 

When Haven fell the congregations were a sight of swollen fear. Trembling soldiers and volunteers crouched on shaking knees and implored for some sort of divine blessing to protect against the scourge they had witnessed. Even the comforts of Skyhold and its thick, high walls seemed to many as little more than an elaborate tomb where they would wait out their end. 

Although it was a far cry from the babble of anti-Elven blasphemy she had assumed from her upbringing Elanna only felt more distant from her uncertainty. Watching the assembled receive their blessings she could hardly bring herself to stare down at them, feeling as though she were gawking at pets in a menagerie as they as they practiced their faith. She glanced over at them sidelong as she paced back and forth along the railing in the balcony that overlooked the keep’s Chantry.

They were singing now, coming together in a hymn whose harmony was betrayed by the inexperienced voices trying to join in it. That made it sweet in its own way as farmers rubbed the elbows of chanters, pilgrims and scholars and had their own imperfect voices woven into the symphony of the skilled so that no one knew where the flaws began or where the beauty ended. 

She thought of her own people and how their fireside songs showed no resemblance to this orderly state of affairs. As the Keeper watched atop his seat, face a stage for shadows from the fire to dance, the clan gathered around the bonfire and each adding their own voice to the mix in loud, rhythmic howls. Compared to the orderly song of the humans the sounds they made must have seemed like the yapps and japes of animals. It was more spirited, as the revelers would toss back their heads and shake their bodies in a state of near competition with one another.

The gods of the Elves were not so easily roused as the Maker, she had determined in her time with these people. Where they were content with one the Dales had need of nine gods, each with their own lusts and loves, each requiring their own songs and prayers to play their hand. 

Footsteps creaked on a wooden stair before they became soft taps on the stone of the balcony. Elanna did not even need to turn to know that it was Dorian, drawn by the sounds of prayer below. The young man tried to make a show that he was living up to his Tevinter reputation by disappearing into the tomes of Skyhold’s library, but it was apparent that it was as much a distraction for his own sake. The world of southern Thedas outside the Imperium’s borders was just familiar enough to create an imperfect reflection, customs and styles so close that when he tried to interact he fumbled with imperfects steps to the southern waltz.

It was safer alone, in the library where he was responsible only for his thoughts. Elanna had recommended that he try finding a connection with Bull. So far from his home the Tevinter and the Qunari must have found something in common to discuss, if only their mutual contempt for each other and the rest of Thedas. She realized that although the Qunari was out of his element as well it was an entirely different experience, working fresh from a whole new world rather than trying to discover what was the same and what was different.

“It’s peculiar isn’t it?” Dorian asked as he rested against the frame of the doorway to the balcony.

Elanna stopped mid pace to turn and regard him. His arms were crossed and he was not quite looking at her, instead past toward the gathering below.

“What do you mean? Praying?” Elanna tried to scoff, but it came out weak and obviously for show. “I’ve seen my fair share of it since this all began.”

Dorian continued as though she had never spoken. “You grow up one way, hearing all your own songs, participating in all your own prayers. Then you come somewhere else and see so many people doing something with such fervor that you’re so certain is being done wrong.”

The man’s words were close enough to Elanna’s own thoughts that she felt a tingle in her mind as though she felt him intruding there.

“It makes me miss home,” Elanna said, confiding at least half of the truth.

“It must be even stranger for you,” Dorian laughed with a soft shake of his head. “At least my home has a passing similarity to all this.” He paused for a moment, furrowed his brow and twisted his lips, causing his waxed mustache to shuffle back and forth. 

“What are your chantries like?” She turned and rested the arch of her back against the railing, focusing on his voice in an attempt to escape the unease of the closeness of the Maker’s faithful.

Dorian did not even miss a beat as he stood up straight and tall, puffing out his chest. “Don’t you know? First we have an orgy in the blood of slaves that failed to meet their quotas. Once all that mess is cleaned up we eat our lunch, salted with the ashes of Andraste. Your soul gets special bonus marks if you say, ‘Mmm, she doesn’t taste that divine!’ When we’re all done naked men parade around the aisles and talk about how great it is that there are no women here. The last part isn’t that awful.”

Elanna swung toward him in a slow, mocking gesture as though she intended to hit him, pawing at him to stop but smirking at him all the same.

“No really,” she insisted.

With a shrug Dorian let out a melodramatic sigh. “It’s different. There’s a lot less Andraste. No Andraste, really. There are men in all the positions worth mentioning. They talk at us a lot more than with us. Morality sermons are big. I mean really big.”

“Morality sermons from slavers.” When she had first met the man Elanna would never have broached the subject so casually, but they had dispensed with the unnecessary etiquette and were now far removed from any care about cultural sensitivities. For every remark about the slaves that languished under the Imperium and Dorian’s involvement in it all he had a dozen dry comments about the noble savages wandering the forests, looking for a kingdom they had misplaced. Her favorite was, “Did you try checking under your bedroll? That’s where I look when things go missing.”

“Baffling, isn’t it?” he remarked back. “But someone has to tell us to respect our mothers and to avoid killing our cousins.” Dorian leaned forward, speaking in a hushed tone as though he were sharing some close guarded secret that had to be hidden from the gathered below. “Sometimes we even listen.”

Hearing Dorian speak of his home was nothing new to Elanna, indeed once the wine began flowing or the subject was breached it was difficult to get him to stop. Not that she ever wanted him to. Even the macabre and the dangers of the Imperium were pleasant to hear as they felt more like tales from a distant land, a place far away from responsibility and sorrow, a place where the sky wasn’t ripped open and the air bled.

So close to the praying of the Chantry, however, sharing those stories only reminded her of home. It was difficult to long for it the way that Bull clearly did for his, even if she was not as restless or listless as Sera. Her yearning for the familiar animal skin tents and wild bonfire celebrations only coincided with the reminder that she had wandered so far from her roots, the rallying cry of armies and nations as the symbol of a faith that was not her own.

“What do the Dalish do when it’s time to wake up a god and ask for the fish to bite?” Dorian asked, stepping closer and leaning with his hands against the railing next to Elanna.

“I can tell you what we do. We bring back a big buck, the hunter who slew it gets to wear the horns, then we dance and beat on drums around a camp fire. What do the other clans do?” Elanna shrugged. “That’s a mystery to me. Even the Keeper probably only knows about our neighboring clans.”

Dorian let out a hum noise. “How curious.”

“Curious?” Elanna echoed.

“A people as old as time and yet you’re one really bad plague away from no one ever knowing you were here.”

Elanna’s face narrowed as she looked up at him, pushing herself up from the rails. “Well that’s a little morbid.”

“Isn’t it though?” Dorian mused with a wink.

 

***

Although she had done her best to keep from showing it Dorian’s words had bothered Elanna and she carried them throughout the day. She did not fault him for observing the truth, but she had never heard the dread notion put to words and now they only felt all too real. The Keepers each did their best to preserve the ways of their clan and in what way they could they recorded the rites and tales of the Elves as a whole. But much of it was an oral tradition that was become more frayed at the edges with each passing generation.

Whispers of Arlathan had come in some songs but if pressed to describe the capitol of the old Elven Empire Elanna would have been at a loss for words. She would have spoken in the vaguest terms, speaking generally about magic and bottomless food. Elanna might even say that the gods walked among us, even if she knew that half of these tales were filled only with her own fantasies. How much of what the Keeper had told her for certain was salted with its own embellishments borne of a want for a truth they could never find? How much had the Keeper before him done the same?

Her thoughts carried her at first to the library alongside Dorian, her eyes darting over every scroll and leather binding she could find. The tomes were bafflingly unhelpful, causing her to growl aloud and wave her hands in frustration at Dorian, who was gawking in quiet amusement.

“The Murders of Havencrow and the Insidious Deeds That Followed?” she read aloud, waving her hands in exasperation. “A Case Against Medaro’s Arboreology? Do shems write nothing worth reading?”

“Oh on the contrary!” Dorian huffed. “Medaro set Arboreology back nearly a generation with his careless research into Twittleleaves.”

Even in spite of the perceived direness of her search Elanna could not help but laugh. “Skyhold used to belong to the Elves, did it not?”

“That’s what Solas says.”

“You would think there would be at least one...thing left by the Elves.”

“Yes that’s the thing about conquerors. They’re surprisingly inconsiderate of the vanquished.”

Elanna stuck her tongue out at him then turned to resume her search.

She found a handful of promising leads with Dorian’s assistance but nothing of any particular substance. Most of it were observations by humans that Elanna spat at as “Shem Blabber”. Some of it was amusing to read if only to be able to see from both sides of the looking glass and laugh at the observer’s misunderstandings. Her favorite was the essay on Elven surgeons that must be necessary to facilitate births, given the women’s narrow “unwomanly hips”.

Her options seemed limited in the main library, but there was a smaller archive in Skyhold’s undercroft. Even the squalid state of the throneroom and main hall seemed well maintained and furnished compared to the forgotten, austere room that one could be forgiven for missing entirely. Some time ago the wood of the door sealing the archive away had rotted off of its hinges and threatened to fall. Rather than fix or even take it down entirely the occupants had settled for placing a pile of furniture in front of the passageway.

Once the objects had been moved away the ancient library within was revealed, with pages strewn about on the floor and crinkling, shattering under foot and vanishing into dust along with whatever was contained on the parchment. Cobwebs hung like canopies from bookshelf to bookshelf where the contents had been tossed aside by looters long ago, searching for hidden jewels with no regard for the treasure of knowledge contained inside.

The most peculiar feature of the lower library was the eight foot wide painting depicting jungles and pyramids at the far end. Under the dust and grime of the ages the best that Elanna could make out was that it was an artist’s rendition of Par Vollen, the land of the Qunari. 

If there was anywhere in Skyhold that retained the ancient knowledges of a time long past it was here. a place overlooked by the masons and the masters who each had an opinion on the proper way to house a castle of substance.

The search began on a hopeful note when she chose a book by chance. If there had ever been words or markings on the cover they were now gone, replaced by scratches and burrows from moths and other insects. The first few pages fell to the floor when she opened the book, but when she finally found text she grinned inwardly to herself. She recognized the old runes of the Elven tongue when she saw them, their smooth shapes that could easily be mistaken for art in their own right.

Had she found what she was looking for and so soon?

The script on the first page was nothing of note, mostly acknowledgments and gratitude for a patron that allowed them to write it. Dragging each page with a delicate care to avoid crumbling it Elanna finally let out an exasperated sigh when she found out that it was a Tevinter spellbook. She knew it might interest Dorian, if only for its historical significance, but it did nothing to aid in her search.

She realized then that many spellbooks were written in similar script. Although conversationally the language was largely dead in the kingdoms it still had a prestigious role to play among the mages. Many of the formulas for spellcraft were still done using Elven script for ease of use and habit. The amount of effort it would take to translate the entirety of the arithmetic that the Elves had used during their prime had left the feat largely untried, creating a universal language that any of the races or civilizations could comprehend.

Elanna poured through others. She found obscure histories that bored her in her current state, even if she could acknowledge their value. Unlike the library up above the vault’s records were clearly more archival in nature. Day to day servants would find little use in old dissertations about the taxation of newly acquired peoples but each grimoire Elanna found among the silk and grains held an indisputable cache of Thedasian history.

Hidden away in the underground of the castle she had not noticed how long she had been sifting through the ledgers and scrolls. The sun had no sway here and the candles that gave out were stubbornly relit with a motion of her fingers without so much as a second thought. To her chagrin she felt as though she now had a greater understanding of the development of rhetoric in the new Tevinter Imperium but that did little to assuage her primary goal in searching.

The Elves were mentioned a great deal, even with some first hand accounts, but it was usually more of the same, or worst of all whispers and hypotheses that intrigued but ultimately led nowhere, making her wish she had never discovered the thread of thought to begin with.

She was awakened from a dream she did not realize she was having with images she could not remember. There were fleeting thoughts of birds in flight and someone standing across a ravine with dark skin but she could not hope to put a face or meaning to any of it. Elanna knew her back ached from the posture she had fallen asleep in, cross legged and hunched over one of her books so that she was half folded over herself. Her tailbone and hips were protesting with a red hot fire.

Above her Elanna heard breathing. She jumped and looked up, realizing that the candles had long since burnt out their wax and she could not see more than few inches in front of her. That caused a momentary panic that nearly sent her tumbling off the table.

“The chandlers will eat well this winter after the Inquisition’s demand for candles,” she recognized the voice of Solas, an unusual hint of brevity in his tone. Even through the darkness she could see him in her mind’s eye, the way he would be tilting his back into an arch, hands clasped on the small of his back. But her favorite part of all, the part she wished she could see through the extinguished candles, was the way his lips would battle to keep from grinning, causing small dimples to form just above the edges of his mouth.

How long had she been asleep and how long had he been standing there watching her?

Rather than asking either of those questions when her mouthed opened she found her hazy mind asking, “Where are the candles?”

“Gone out, I’m afraid,” Solas answered. She heard his shirt shuffle then felt the air gust around her and all at once the room was again bathed in orange light. At first her eyes were overloaded with a sensation of pale white as she tried to readjust and she put a hand over her face to try to keep out some the oppressive glare. “You’ve been down here a long time.”

“How long?” As she spoke her dry lips were chopping and her throat was parched.

“If Dorian is to be believed since around noon yesterday.”

Noon was a lot longer than she had anticipated. Elanna stretched back until she could feel her spine pop. Then his words set in and she snapped back forward.

“Yesterday?” she exclaimed, earning a nod from Solas. “Why didn’t anyone come get me?”

“Well I am here, so I would say someone came and got you.” As she stretched and tried to return feeling to her feet Solas leaned over and took the book from her lap. She froze as he tenderly turned the book around and cradled it in his palm. His eyes fell to the old ink and darted back and forth to get an assessment of what she was reading.

The sensation of his interest on the book sent a pulse that started in the back of her skull and carried all the way down her spine. She could not tell if he could sense it or if the entire event was playing out in slow motion but he seemed to take an eternity to finish the page, lick his thumb and turn to the next, the tingle she was feeling heightened by the sound of the crinkling page.  
When he finished with a clear of his throat the tension of his reading snapped and Elanna felt as though she had been dropped back into reality. He closed the book with a slow, careful grace to protect it.

“I did not realize you were such an avid reader of Caspier Veneraut,” Solas remarked, pressing the book up to his chest and grinning again, dimples and all.

Elanna huffed and leaned back with the flats of her hands on the table to support her weight.

“Well,” she joked, raising a foot and poking him in the knee with the tip of her toe, “his later works got a little uh, lofty, but his earlier pieces are still good.”

“Are they?” Solas mused, his face softening to show he was aware of the location of Elanna’s foot even if he did not look down to acknowledge it.

“Of course, are you not familiar with him?”

Solas glanced down at the book. “According to this particular tome he was a Divine Age heretic that believed that Andraste was a spirit of lust. He advocated abstinence to avoid her from possessing and, by extension, corrupting more men.”

Elanna’s face was flat and confused. Was that what that book had been about? She glanced down at it, pressed against Solas’s chest. She remembered a jumble of words that seemed to drone on in fanciful language, meant primarily to flatter the author and perhaps the readers that understood it.

“Well,” she stammered, clearing her throat to try to add some moisture to it, “maybe she was. You never can tell with Shems.”

Solas raised a mocking eyebrow. “Indeed.” He put the book down on one of the shelves then took a seat next to her. “So why don’t you tell me what brought you down here?”

With no results to speak of Elanna felt defeated in her search and brought her knees up to her chest, not wanting to confide in her failure. Looking across the way at the book of the Andrastian heresy made her feel like a fool for even venturing down here.

“There’s nothing written about us is there?” she finally asked, chewing in pain on the words.

Solas raised an eyebrow. “Us?”

“Elves. The Dales.” Solas did not answer, instead urging her on with his silence. “All we have is what other people have said about us and little things we try not to forget. But that’s it, that’s all we are. We’re whispers in the wind and somebody else’s story.”

Solas watched in silence for several moments as he digested her words, carried on a voice that seemed caught somewhere between sadness and frustration. Her search had not bore any fruit, exacerbating any anger or sorrow she might have felt in the first place.

“You want to remember things even the Elves themselves have forgotten,” he observed at length. Elanna looked up at him and with no better way to respond found herself shrugging and nodding. With that gesture Solas climbed to his feet and spun on his heels. “Well we are never going to discover anything in the depths of Skyhold.”

Elanna raised an eyebrow. “Pardon?”

“Come,” he insisted, a sudden and unusual spring in his step. “We have searching to do.”

 

*****

The Inquisition had become its own apparatus, capable of functioning and sustaining itself without Elanna’s careful eye, not that it was ever a particularly careful eye to begin with. She could not be certain if it was out of duty, respect, or piety but after Haven’s fall the forces of the Inquisition seemed to want to consult her on every matter before making a decision. In the early days her command was more akin to her assent, aggressively proposing very little and instead choosing the most palatable of options presented to her.

As time had gone on and the wheels of command became better greased by experience the various individuals, from top to bottom, began to accurately guess her decisions, or at least grow better determining what was too urgent to discuss without her and what could be handled to keep Skyhold running.

At first her private excursions with Solas were something done in relative secret. Her guilt at leaving the keep behind with no word had kept her from keeping it entirely secret, though Cassandra was always the first to let her know how irresponsible it was Haven’s fall had been fresh in all their minds then and though Elanna could not fault Cassandra for her caution it still made her feel like a chastised child rather than the paragon of a cause.

Times were different now. Haven was a different life. It must have been peculiar for the faithful, Elanna thought, that the foot of the Temple of Sacred Ashes was the refuge of their doubt, when an Elf had emerged from the ruins of their greatest temple and speculative eyes hoped but could not be certain that she was a message from the Divine.

They were a bunch of tits, she thought, but at least they were now tits that had a cause they believed in.

A feeling of familiarity washed over Elanna the further she rode from Skyhold. Her clan’s journeys had been far to the north, across the sea as they wandered the Free Marches. The very landscape was unrecognizable to look upon, with its hills that curved into mountain that touched the sky. To further render the land alien and strange was the way the plains she and Solas had ridden upon was upturned, the green grass that likely dotted the ground was shoveled out and turned into an ugly, muddy black. 

But there was a magic in the air that was thick and intoxicating, making Elanna feel as though she were swimming through a caustic air even as she and Solas rode into the Exalted Plains. It was the feeling of home, as familiar to her as the smell of rabbit stew and a freshly skinned buck, of the paint the hunters used to blend their form to the trees, smelling of olives and herbs. 

Although both sides of the Orlesian Civil War, entrenched as they were and largely staring at one another from across the strewn earth, claimed total control of the region Solas made it more than clear just how little they knew about their own charge. Which was fortunate as the heavily guarded main road was the furthest from their destination, sweeping deep into the tall mounds of earth and buried under trees so ancient that they groaned like sore old men.

As they stopped for lunch, stringing their horses beneath the bark of one of the tired old trunks, Elanna took a moment to wonder how many of the great camps and siege engines among the feuding humans were built from the very bark that had seen the rise, fall, and new birth of kingdoms.

The thought carried itself to words as Solas prepared their camp. “These trees are so old,” she observed, not quite turning to look at him as she let her thoughts wander.

“That they are.”

“How much of it do you think the Shems are using in their war?”

Solas put down a pot that they would use for their cooking and rose to regard her. “Probably more than you would like,” he answered, “but probably less than you would think. Trees have seen worse than this conflict and they’re likely going to see worse yet. I would not worry a great deal about them.”

He had been strangely silent for the duration of the journey, though it seemed to be a pleased silence. This had not been the first time the two had journeyed forward in pursuit of their Elven past, but it had usually been at his own urging. She had always been content enough to follow along, if only to enjoy his company and observations.

Her thirst for knowledge had put him in good spirits and perhaps his silence was owed to the joy that denied him the need to make cynical remarks on his observations as they passed. She was not sure if she preferred the quiet, happy Solas to the talkative, gloomy one.

They ate a light lunch of porridge and vegetable stew, then Solas approached the edge of the cliff on which they were perched and glanced down at the ravine below. Vines and roots were trying to escape their earthen prison and wrap around the valley, exposed and foreign, some retreating back into the ground as quickly as they had come out as though they were developing second thoughts. Criss crossing the way were several stoneworks built countless ages ago, the mortar and brick chipped and weathered yet somehow still standing.

“There is so much to learn here,” it was the first time he had spoken since lunch and the first time he had started on his own. “But the conventional method of wandering around and hoping to trip over artifacts is no doubt the least efficient.”

“You mean to dream,” Elanna said, stepping behind him and following his eyes.

“I do.”

“Can I come with you?”

“I anticipated you would ask me that.”

Elanna raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And?”

“And I’ve already brought you with me.”

She balked and looked around. Glancing back she realized that the camp was nowhere to be seen and as she thought about it she remembered that they had chosen closer to the ground for their stay, nowhere near any cliff. It was strange and alarming, but delightful in a childlike way how her memory in dreams took whatever it had seen for granted and tried to piece it together without upsetting her.

“Well…” she stammered, trying to regain her senses and bearing in this alien environment. “You’re pretty good at that.”

Solas smiled as much to himself as to her. “I’ve had some practice.”

“How long have we been asleep?”

“A few hours. You stirred a little longer than I.”

“Well I’m not as well practiced as you.” She stuck her tongue out at him, then swept her gaze back out across the canyon. She felt a shudder course up her spine as she thought about this walk somewhere between the Fade and Thedas. “There’s a lot of pain here.”

“There is,” Solas agreed, “but that is a sheet spread over the landscape of emotions that have populated this place time and again. Do you feel that?” He motioned away. “That is hope. And there is love. Passion, I would say, is the most common thing you will find here.”

“Passion?” she tried to feel that but the feelings of death and despair were too smothering. She suspected that those were the more temporal feelings as he had said. Even as the fighting had come to a temporary truce the soldiers were unable to escape the reality of unwashed bodies sharing a field with the dead, all congregated together and swapping diseases among one another. Their sorrow called out loudest of all.

“Passion. I would not strictly call it an emotion itself, if we want to get technical it’s more of an amplifier. But it is there. These plains have called passions from all corners of the world it would seem.” 

She tried but it was impossible to see past the initial haze of war.

Sensing that frustration, Solas took her by the hand and pointed with her own fingers down the valley toward a small creek. The small flow of water was all that remained of the mighty river that had carved out the valley below. She saw nothing save for a trickle of bushes that might have been an animal or might have been the breeze. 

“Do you see it?” Solas urged, clenching her wrist a little tighter.

Elanna ground her teeth and narrowed her eyes, struggling to double her focus. Just as she was ready to give up she saw what he was directing her toward, a small shape, cream colored but in the lithe form of an Elf. They were wispy, cream colored and translucent, with long, wild hair that danced in the wind but seemed to never truly end, only fading into the air until it was no longer visible.

The being was too distant for her to make out any features, though she did see that it was moving at a careful, step over step pace.

“I see it,” she acknowledged.

“Focus on it,” Solas commanded. His voice softened. “On her.”

At first obedience to his command was difficult with the overwhelming feeling of loss that tried to encircle and envelope her but she pressed on, trying to make nothing in the world exist but the shape. It was difficult with the feeling of Solas’s chest, expanding and retracting with his breaths or the way his hot palm was wrapped around her wrist. 

When at last she managed to narrow her vision down to only the wisp of a woman she felt as though she were being pulled down a long hallway, stopping only when she collided into a wall of her thoughts.

It was here. You’re gone, but I cannot feel sad. You’re here still, I can feel you.

“She’s mourning,” Elanna’s voice was quiet and calm, as though to keep from disturbing the spirit.

“In a way,” Solas whispered back. “She’s remembering.”

“Isn’t that mourning?”

“In a more wizened, distant way.”

The spirit knelt down and grazed the tips of her knuckles against the earth, smiling as she felt again the sand and pebbles that were once scraping her knees as she knelt for lunch or picked at the bottom of her feet as she secluded away to her secret liaison. Her heart throbbed because she would never feel those pebbles, that dirt with him again, but it swelled, cherishing that they had shared it at all.

“A victim of one of the wars?” Elanna asked, a lump growing in her throat.

“Not quite,” Solas explained, understanding that she could not quite reach into the well of her memories as he could. “He was taken by time, surrounded by the ones he loved, sipping hot wine to ease his pain. She was there at the end, saying her goodbyes. The histories would have you believe that that every T in this land is crossed with blood but those are passing sorrows for a place so old.”

I would trade anything for another day with you, except the time we spent together, which I cherish among all else.

“She’s Dalish,” Elanna remarked and although it might have been obvious the kinship she was feeling caused her to suddenly beam with joy.

“Her’s is but another thread in the undying tapestry of the People’s history, vhenan.”

Elanna felt her body tremble and her knees go weak. If Solas had not been so tightly clasped onto her she might have fallen to the crags below. She leaned back, opting instead to fall into him.

She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. When they opened again she felt jolted awake. Solas was facing her, eyes wide, lying sidelong. She looked around, trying to regain her bearings, recognizing the old tree where they tied their horses, finding a new comfort in the smell of their extinguished fire.

“We’re awake,” she spoke, as much to herself as Solas.

He only nodded to her.

Now her own memories were embroidered into the Exalted Plains. She cupped Solas into her hands and leaned in close for a kiss, shuddering at the feeling of his warm breath washing out against her.

They lay like that for several long moments, neither offering words that might take away from the experience they had shared. She felt his arms wrap around her, hands resting on the small of her back as though to hold her into place.

She was ready to fall back asleep like that, her moment then as perfect as the one they shared over the valley. She wondered if one day she would come back to this place, grazing her knuckles against the dirt, remembering when they held witness to this moment.


End file.
